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To move
Cleanly.
Needing to be
Nowhere else.
Wanting nothing
From any store.
To lift something
You already had
And set it down in
A new place.
Awakened eye
Seeing freshly.
What does that do to
The old blood moving through
Its channels?

We have so long mistaken ourselves for our fear. We may even feel that without our fear we would not know who we were. But love can give a meaning to our life that the state of meaninglessness can not imagine. Indeed we may find when we begin to live a life of love that we have not been living our own life but rather in the image and likeness of someone else’s, a parent, an admired hero, an unreachable religious figure. The image of someone we wished we were. And come to notice why “ wearing the clothes of another” our life fit so poorly.

We discover our true life a day at a time. The unfolding of our authentic life may take us through unexplored territory. What we settled for previously may be seen as always somewhat dissatisfactory as the satisfaction of we become increasingly loving toward ourselves and others. Not allowing the judging mind to rush into the wake of our progress and follow us like a lost dog. But noticing those tendencies too to be unloving toward ourselves. Sometimes the barking gets so loud we can hardly hear our selves think anything else. But instead of running fearfully away we mindfully turn toward these fears and speak softly to the dog, we make it feel safe not knowing quite what lays ahead but daily learning from an increasing warmth to trust the process. Its not, as the judging mind might growl, that we were somehow living a lie before but that now day by day options previously little considered are presenting themselves. In a sense we are always living something of a lie until there is nothing separating us from the clarity that is indistinguishable from love.

No one can dream our dreams or pray our prayers. But grace is our true nature. The experience of our true grace awaits our willingness to go deeper. And when we meet beneath who we think we are who we really are it thrills us. It liberates unimagined options.

As Rene Dumal pointed out in Mount Analogue those who stay in the base camp may believe they are safer at times but those who climb gain a perspective that stays with them for a lifetime. In fact once we have been able to see above the lowlands we are never quite lost again and our view of life is forever offered a more spacious option.

***

What might it be like to inhabit a life of clarity and love?

To explore the terrain of love just below the stormy atmosphere that sometimes hides our true nature from view? To traverse a universe within greater, more spacious, than that in which the stars seem to float. To wander the pastures of compassion, to dive to the bottom of the bottomless sea of Being and the heart not skip a beat, and the breath breathe itself in absolute peace.

A woman who had been depressed for some time spoke of waking up one morning into “a very new day”. She said she awoke somehow knowing that “when the heart has broken it heals back bigger than before because it has to incorporate so much pain”. The subtle nausea that often precedes a breaking through arose as her attention dropped into the ache growing at the center of her chest. The pain was so great she could hardly breathe. It felt like her breath, maybe even her heart, might stop. It seemed a very long time between breaths. Gasping for air like someone just short of drowning she said, it felt like first her belly, and then her chest burst open as she took a breath directly into her heart. She felt a kind of mercy and willingness to live fill her heart. Her body heaved with a great sigh as she let that releasing breath go.From something deeper than knowing she remembered how breathing directly could revive the heart.

And she began to breathe in and out of the ache in the center of her chest sensing it was a vent directly into her heart. Breathing in love and breathing out all the unattended sorrow. Opening into a day in what became a remarkable life of love.

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